Friday, November 14, 2008

OK so I saw this movie in an advance screening this week (a benefit of being in NYC) and it's fantastic. Very extremely extra brilliant. Makes you laugh. Makes you cry. John Travolta is the voice of the dog (and the dog's expressions are all modeled on his). Great music. If you love dogs you'll go mad; if you don't love dogs you will by the end.

E.B. White wrote, "Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace."

But he also loved the city--he's the author of a classic about New York City, Here is New York, of course, as well as the peerless, Charlotte' Web.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

thanks to an army of motion sensors, dimmers, timers as well as costs, codes and conservation, buildings are no longer glowing at night in NYC. They go dark when the city sleeps. Which is good.
Except it's not as pretty. In 1957 (below, view from 30 Rock south) electricity set manhattan ablaze, the towers shone all night long and the city sparkled.
Read more here.